John Tremblay in "Painting as a Radical Form" at Collezione Maramotti

7 October 2012 - 3 February 2013

Collezione Maramotti is proud to announce a conversation between Mario Diacono and Bob Nickas, Sunday 7 October at 11.00am, on the occasion of the release and international distribution of Mario Diacono’s book, Archetypes and Historicity / Painting and Other Radical Forms 1995-2007 (Silvana Editoriale) and the opening of the exhibition Painting as a Radical Form, in the south gallery of the Collection, with the works of many of the artists presented in the volume.

Starting from the book and the exhibition, the conversation will expound the developments of advanced paintings from the last fifteen years in the United States and Europe.

Diacono’s book groups together the critical texts which have accompanied exhibitions in his Boston gallery between 1994 and 2007. Together with Verso una nuova Iconografia (1984)and Iconography and Archetypes (2010), the book is his third and last exploration of post-Conceptual art. The use of similar words in the three titles points at a virtual continuity between new works and old imagery. The fil rouge between contemporary images and those from the past can still be perceived despite the re-inventing – or tout-court invention – of the media that artists employ to make their notion of form materialize. If the novel features of techniques are always deliberate, the archetypal structure coming back into the image seems to be mostly an unconscious development: This is one of the assumptions the author starts from.

In the last thirty years intertextuality, or better still interfigurality, between old and contemporary images has also hinted at another feature of globalization – that of space – which new media and multinational economies have produced. There is also a globality of time which – through encyclopedic museums, the philosophy of consciousness, art books, travels, an increasingly specialized knowledge of the past, and the dissemination of information – has built the modern mind and made all the art diachronic in its creation, although synchronic in its meaning. The strength of the artists’ insight and the intelligence of their formal devices are obviously unyielding in the presence of interfigurality, but a work often acquires an additional intensity thanks to the depth it receives from the (re)invention of an archetype.

The conversation between the author and US art critic and independent curator Bob Nickas, who for two decades has brought to light and enhanced the work of many talented young artists in the United States, will focus on this critical reading.

The temporary exhibition (and also, in part, the permanent collection) presents works by US artists or artists working in the United States, present in Collezione Maramotti, and acquired by collector Achille Maramotti at the time when they were first exhibited. Some of the artists are: Donald Baechler, Barry x Ball, Huma Bhabha, Michael Craig-Martin, Ann Craven, Matthew Day Jackson, Ellen Gallagher, Nicky Hoberman, Jutta Koether, Enoc Perez, Matthew Ritchie, Tom Sachs, Jessica Stockholder, John Tremblay, Kelley Walker, Jules de Balincourt. A project by de Balincourt, made specifically for Collezione Maramotti will be inaugurated the previous day (Saturday 6 October).

Mario Diacono: has published Vito Acconci / Dal testo-azione al corpo come testo in 1975, Verso una nuova iconografia in 1984, Iconography and Archetypes in 2010. From 1977 to 2007 he owned galleries in Bologna, Roma, Boston, New York and again in Boston. His first poetry book, Denomisegninatura, was published in 1962; the second, Mysticficactions (1967) in 2011; and his latest r:Esistenza, in 2008. He lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.

Bob Nickas: independent art critic and curator, has lived and worked in New York for almost three decades, during which he has organized more than eighty exhibitions. He was in the curatorial team of Aperto at Venice Biennale in 1993 and Lyon Biennale in 2003. From 2003 to 2006 he was Curatorial Advisor at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center of New York. Of the many books he has written, Painting Abstraction (2009) is the first important study on recent innovations in abstract painting; his many articles were published – among others – by Artforum, Afterall, Purple.

Painting as a Radical Form
From 7 October 2012 to 3 February 2013
The exhibition, with free admission, can be visited during the opening hours of the permanent collection.
Thursday and Friday 2.30pm – 6.30pm
Saturday and Sunday 10.30am – 6.30pm
Closing days: 25-26 December, 1 and 6 January